I'm reviving this blog temporarily to use for my campaign to be Liberal Youth England (LYE) Chair. You can find my campaign facebook page here and below is how I announced my candidacy:

[TONGUE IN CHEEK KLAXON]

As we're on the eve of Liberal Youth England elections I thought I'd put on my Six Years Membership of LY(TM) Hat and explain a bit about it.

Who is LYE?
What is LYE?
How did it come to be there?

Well hush children and Clopin will tell you. For this is a tale of a youth wing... and a monster.

If you don't get the reference then either your childhood sucked or you're probably too old to be able to vote for me.

Once upon a time there was no federal Liberal Youth. Instead there was Scottish Young Liberal Democrats (SYLD) in Scotland and Liberal Democrat Youth and Students (LDYS) in England. God knows what they did in Wales back then - rode dragons and mined pot noodles presumably.

Now LDYS had pretty much all the money back then because the Lib Dem English party gave them all the membership fees from every youth and student member in England. And since England has so many people that made LDYS incredibly rich compared to SYLD and whatever they had in Wales.

Don't worry about remembering all those acronyms though because they became utterly irrelevant in 2002 when they all merged(including their money) and you ended up with Liberal Youth as the federal youth wing and Liberal Youth Scotland (LYS) in Scotland) and IR Cymru in Wales.

But since LYS and IR organised their own conferences, made their own policy and were represented on the Scottish Lib Dem exec and the Welsh Lib Dem exec it was eventually decided that it might be a good idea to go back to having some sort of structure to cover LY members in England - although all policy making powers for England would stay with federal Liberal Youth.

So the position of English Convenor was created. But it didn't really do anything other than exist - but this is how Liberal Youth England came into existence.

So then they added LYE Regional Chairs for every regional party in England who were also meant to be members of a LYE executive - they never really had a job description or particular purpose but they were meant to really make things happen with members in their region by being someone on the ground who could support branches and stuff.

Unfortunately this didn't really work out. Mainly because:

- there are lots of regions with often not enough candidates to go around
- nobody knew who the chairs were or what they were for
- hardly anyone noticed when elections were held
- the people who became chairs were overstretched if they ever tried to do anything
- lots of chairs quit before they completed their terms of office
- as a result, lots of new regional chairs had to wait weeks or months to even get the passwords to their email accounts since there was no proper hand over

So then things changed again. The position of English Convenor was rebranded as English Chair and very recently a proper executive was created by adding the positions of a Vice-Chair each for Campaigns and Membership and three General Executive Members. It even has a budget now - out of the many thousands of pounds Liberal Youth gets from the English party, LYE now gets a massive £750!

Of course LYE still doesn't make policy. Still doesn't have its own website. Still doesn't organise its own events. Still doesn't run any campaigns. Last year it didn't even have elections for its representatives to sit on the decision making body of the English party - because, er, people forgot they needed to happen (and then federal LY refused to pay for them).

Mind you, it does have a Chair, Conor McKenzie, who's listed on the Liberal Youth website. And if you're prepared to look on the LYE Chair page and find the one word hyperlink you can even find the details of everyone else on the LYE executive.

So that's what LY is, who it is and how it came to be.

What does it do? Not a lot - though that's not the fault of the people running it at the moment. What could it do? F***ing lots of things - be it events, policy making, campaigning, branch development or something else. It just needs a proper purpose.

And you get to decide exactly what it should be in this election smile emoticon

Monday, 2 March 2015

So obviously I haven't posted on here in quite a while. There are a number of reasons for that which I'll quickly go through.

One is that I think I've mellowed somewhat. I still get angry about things which I think are unjust but I find that I don't have the same drive to shout from the rooftops about them. On top of that I find that reading through some things I've posted in the past makes me feel embarrassed about how sweary I've been. While I might still think that some people are [expletive deleted]s that doesn't mean that the best response is to call them that.

Another reason is that starting from around October 2013 my mental state started to deteriorate. It was a combination of things, mostly stress from personal relationships and my academic studies which built up until I couldn't cope any more. The short version of a long story is that I had to suspend my studies, I got counselling from my university's wellbeing centre, I had a lot of support from friends and family and ultimately I got better. I went back to university in October 2014 and I'm in the process of finishing my final year at the time of writing.

My 23rd year was undoubtedly the worst, most harrowing year of my life but at least it's over now and I'm feeling pretty much back to normal. However, one of the many things which fell by the wayside during that time period was my blog. And after so long it feels very hard to find the energy to start it up again.

Yet another reason for my not blogging is that, whilst I still enjoy writing, I find that my energy as a writer seems to have a limit and I'm using it on other things. If I have an idea which I want to share, nowadays I'll write an article for Lib Dem Voice where it'll find a larger audience that it could ever get on my blog. If I want to write an article about local politics I'll save it for the Onslow Lib Dems website. If I want to write for relaxation then I'll tend to focus on a nerdy, yet fun, thingy I'm doing on the forum for a game I enjoy playing. If I want to share an opinion or discuss something which is just happening then I'll use twitter. Plus there have been plenty of academic things to do which involve lots of writing.

All of those are things I do when I feel like it because I feel like it. But for me this blog ended up feeling too much like work. I felt a pressure to write articles regularly and to try and build and maintain an audience. Yet when I did so it often came at the expense of other things which I then felt bad about neglecting.

Since I've had to learn the hard way not to overstretch myself and to try and minimise the number of demands on my time and energy, this blog has ended up being sacrificed.

I can't bring myself to delete it and I'm sad to let it go but as it is I doubt I'll ever be picking up blogging again. I might stick something on here occasionally, and if I write an article for Lib Dem Voice or somewhere I'll try to remember to cross post it here but overall, this blog is in hibernation for the foreseeable future.

Thank you to everyone who's read it and thank you to everyone who's commented. I'm still a Lib Dem, I'm still a feminist, I still care about making the world a better place and I'm still fighting the good fight as best I can but overall I've decided that there are better ways to try and achieve it than by running a private blog.

Monday, 28 October 2013

Something which is really pissing me off at the moment is the way that overt sexism can continue to get a free pass in the Liberal Democrats.

I mean, the vast majority of liberals would say they're against sexism and would claim that they wouldn't tolerate it but actions speak louder than words. And when it comes to actions, things are pretty disappointing. Of course, this isn't unique to the Lib Dems as sexist double standards and hypocrisy are par for the course in every political party and across society as a whole but it still sticks in the craw when the Lib Dems are a party meant to be founded on the principle of the fundamental equality of every human being.

What's triggered this rant is a report in the Independent that Nick Clegg is considering supporting introducing All Women Shortlists (AWS) if the proportion of female Lib Dem MPs (currently 7 out of 57) doesn't improve significantly in 2015.

(As a quick explanation, an all women shortlist is where only women are allowed to be considered as candidates for a particular seats in order to guarantee that a woman is selected).

Now, whether or not people support AWS is one thing. Personally I tend to support the introduction of them (or preferably, all diversity shortlists). But what is clear to everyone is that the party has a big problem with gender balance at a parliamentary level - and also in fact at every other level apart from a European one where positive action was taken in the first election in order to obtain a gender balance which has maintained itself ever since.

I would suggest that most women are far too sensible and considerate to their families to put themselves and their loved ones through the terrible strains required by the prolonged self-exploitation required to be a Lib Dem candidate in anything other than a ‘safe’ held succession seat. This doesn’t leave many seats for them to ‘go for’. Not all men are basically more selfish and inconsiderate but more than enough are.

Now what this is is a spectacular example of "benevolent", paternalistic, patronising sexism. It's basically saying that women are much "nicer" and more "gentle" (subtext: weaker) than men and that's why not so many women don't stand as candidates. Or, basically, it's saying that women are too weak compared to rough and tough men to get involved in politics and this is the source of the problem rather than sexism within the party which prevents and discourages women from standing to be elected.

Yes, sure, benevolent sexism like this can sound friendly, and even complimentary - after all, this guy is just saying that women aren't selfish and inconsiderate, what's wrong with that?

Except this is the exact problem with benevolent sexism. It sounds friendly so it tends to get less scrutiny and yet the underlying assumptions of it, that women are all have families and are focused mainly on them, that women are weaker and less interested in involvement in "tough" subjects like politics, are just as awful and harmful as run-of-the-mill sexism.

And the guy who said this is a Lib Dem councillor in Southport. His name is Tony Dawson.

Cllr Tony Dawson

So here we have someone in a position of authority in local government, who is an elected office holder representing the Lib Dems and who, by virtue of being a councillor, will have significant authority in his local party compared to an ordinary member.

Yet this kind of comment by him gets a free pass. I'm the only person who bothered to challenge him in the thread on his sexism. And when I did I got this comment from another person who rushed into defend Tony Dawson:

George,

You can put silly words into Tony’s mouth if you want to, but when you have been around as long has he has, and have seen what it involves, you will realise he is telling the truth. You may not like it, but there it is.

P.S. You can call us ageist if you wish, but the one place you get experience from is having seen your own and others’ youthful naivety fail before. You may not like that either …

Yup, you heard it here first ladies and gents. Saying that women are "far too sensible" and "considerate to their families" to get involved in politics is just a statement of fact about reality. And only naive, silly young people would think otherwise.

Well bollocks to that kind of sexism and bollocks to that kind of ageism. I've been an active party member for four years, I sit on a regional executive, I'm policy officer for the Lib Dem Disability Association, I've stood twice as a council candidate, I'm secretary of my local party and I'm a member of my local party's campaign committee as well as chairing our membership development and events committee.

And in all of those four years I've had first Sue Doughty and then Kelly-Marie Blundell as my local Lib Dem parliamentary candidate. Both of them women. Both of them fantastic, amazing candidates. Both of them considerate and sensible people who care about their families. And both of whom have been fantastic standard bearers for the Lib Dems and as good as any a candidate a local party could ever ask for.

So, I'm sorry to the benevolent sexists and ageists out there but women are just as good as men, just as capable as men and the fact that we have so few women MPs is a problem with sexism in the party - not with women being innately too shy and passive to stand for election in the same numbers as men.

And, while I'm at it, any twazzock who thinks that just because I'm under the age of 25 my opinions can't be valid can go fornicate themselves given that the likes of them seem perfectly happy to exploit young people as leaflet deliverers and general campaigning canon fodder whenever they need us but can't stand the idea of us having opinions of our own and being entitled to the same respect for them that anyone over the age of 25 is entitled to.

Friday, 13 September 2013

One particularly gruelling part of my summer holiday was spending several hours (spread out over a month because I really, really didn't want to do it) was copying data by hand from the Guildford borough marked register to the Lib Dem election software database.

But since explaining what the marked register is will take a while, here's a brief summary of the rest of this post:

1. Everyone registered to vote is listed on the 'electoral register'2. The electoral register is available to political parties and candidates3. Parties and candidates use it to work out who the voters are for campaigning purposes4. When people vote, staff at polling stations cross their name off on a copy of the electoral register5. This is called the 'marked register' and records who has voted - but not how they've voted6. Parties and candidates use it to find out who has voted so they know who to target their campaigning at next time (e.g. not at people who never, ever vote)7. The copy of the marked register my local party got was a paper version8. This meant I spent far too long entering information about 80,000+ individually into excel9. This is known by me as 'the horror of the marked register'
Now to continue with the full explanation:

Every area in the country has an electoral office whose main job is to look after their part of the national electoral register. This is basically a massive great list of the names and addresses of everyone in the country who is registered to vote.

In practice, there are several different sub sets of the register though. For example, there's the postal voter electoral register which only contains people who are registered to vote by post and different ones for different elections containing only the people eligible to vote in them.

Now anyone can walk into any electoral office in the country and ask to see the electoral register. You can also buy a copy of it if you like - which a lot of commercial organisations, particularly marketing and credit reference agencies, do.

But since the register has people's names, addresses (and quite often dates of birth and phone numbers) on it, everyone has the option to opt out of being listed on the publicly and commercially available version of the register - and if you want to do this you can do it whenever you fill in your details to register to vote.

However, political parties and candidates have the right to get a copy of the full electoral register so that they can find out who the voters are.

We do lots of things with the list of voters, often quite sophisticated things nowadays with our fancy new election software (such as remembering who's interested in education policy and who cares more about bin collections) but at the heart of it is using it to ask voters to vote for us, making notes of who's said they're going to vote for us and then trying to find out if they've actually voted for us.

And that brings me back to the marked register.

When someone goes to vote, the people working in the polling station will cross their name off of a copy of the electoral register. This copy is known as the marked register because it's been marked to show who's voted - not how they've voted but just whether they've voted.

Political parties and candidates are also entitled to get a copy of the marked register - which we duly did in Guildford following the local elections in May. We use this to work out how likely people are to vote and this in turn makes our life easier because it lets us target our campaigning activities next time to people whose likelihood to vote makes it worthwhile in terms of the effort it takes.

But, since Guildford borough only gives out its marked register in a paper format, rather than digitally, I got to experience the mind-numbing tedium of entering data about 80,000 or so voters into excel. And this tedium, which must be repeated after every single election, is the horror of the marked register.

Wednesday, 11 September 2013

As is pretty obvious, I haven’t been blogging a lot
lately (no updates for over a month - woo!). This is mainly because I’ve found myself both busy with other things
and tending to vent about topical issues elsewhere rather than having the time
to sit down and blog about them.

I don’t want to give up on this blog though so I’ve
decided to adopt a new approach to it. While I’m not going to rule out writing
posts about current events, I’m going to try to focus much more on posts
actually explaining the process of politics itself and the background of
current political stories.

My reasoning behind this is that people like me who are
actively involved in politics aren’t normal. We’re actually very, very weird.
Most of the people I know in politics know about and could name at least a
dozen people on average from each major political party. Polls show that the
average person, on the other hand, mainly just knows the name of the Prime
Minister, the name of the leader of the opposition and possibly the name of the
Chancellor.

This really reinforces the idea of the ‘Westminster
bubble’ - a little world of its own where politicians, journalists,
commentators and other members of the media reside and are hyper aware of
what’s going on while outside of the bubble the vast majority of the country
has only the vaguest of inklings about things which people in the bubble assume
to be common knowledge.

If I were to talk about RISOs, Focus leaflets, knocking
up, GOTV, Connect and PPCs most of my fellow Liberal Democrats would instantly
know what I was talking about. Almost everyone else would be completely
baffled.

And since most people don’t have the time or inclination
to spend the equivalent of a part time jobs worth of effort to be involved in
politics to the extent that people inside the Westminster bubble are, I’ve
decided it would be helpful if there was someone out there actually breaking
political stories and processes down into something which you don’t need to be
a complete politics geek to understand.

Given that my doing this would actually give this blog a
purpose, and give people more of a reason to read it, I consider that changing
the point of this blog to that is something of a win-win.

So look forward to seeing, in the near future, an
explanation of the esoteric and occult world of marked and unmarked electoral
registers - what they are, why they matter and what politicians do with your
information that’s recorded on them.

Sunday, 4 August 2013

Now, firstly, there's nothing wrong with being a foreigner and only xenophobic bigots think otherwise.

But, secondly, I'm one of those people the Daily Mail would consider a foreigner.

My parents were both born in Britain and were British citizens but I happened to be born abroad, in Belgium. I was registered as a British citizen from birth, we visited England regularly while we lived in Belgium and I myself have lived in England ever since I was five years old.

But the Daily Mail considers me to be a foreigner. And by including the likes of me as a foreigner they get to make up big scary statistics about so many millions of people being foreigners taking this country away from decent British folk.

Well I'm British and I'm English. I was born an Englishman and a British citizen and I will die an Englishman and a British citizen.

And if the Daily Mail choose to insist otherwise then they can go fuck themselves for all I care.

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